The new whitepaper says that Sovrin includes a Token which enables digital value transfer. Although the whitepaper talks about it in the present tense, “… is designed to …” this is the first I have heard of it and I believe I have read all the prior whitepapers, trust documents, high level design documents and roadmaps.

I only have about a thousand questions about this:

Where is this documented?

If it hasn’t been designed yet, who is doing it, when will specs be available? Even a detailed functional specification would be extremely useful.

What can you do with tokens? Are they a general digital currency or are they somehow restricted to Identity.

Has the Sovrin Board thought about the many non-technical and semi-technical issues related to introducing a digital coin scheme? (The fact that it is being called a Token rather than a digital coin says something, but I am not sure what.)

Hi Hal - sorry for the delay getting back to you. Much of the Sovrin chat happens in the Sovrin Slack and Indy Rocketchat at the moment.

If you look at the original white paper “The Inevitable Rise of Self-Sovereign Identity” you will see a section called The Economic Model of Sovrin which describes a new marketplace for “Premium Claims”. This paper and the subsequent research has informed the thinking for how such an economic model can be technically delivered.

The more recent Protocol and Token white paper goes into more detail about the potential, and how a token-based mechanism can enable a series of new features, while maintaining or enhancing privacy.

The Sovrin Foundation will publish a further paper with more details specifically on the functionality of the token - no specific date for that yet.

I’m glad you’ve held back to just 4 out of your thousand questions!

Full details will come in the to-be-issued Sovrin Foundation token paper.

See 1.

The basic capabilities as they are currently envisaged are laid out in the current protocol and token paper. More detail will come in 1)

Yes, much extraordinary brainpower is being applied.

I know this doesn’t give you all the detail you want, you’ll have to hold on for the main token paper for that.

I’ve got another question. In the Whitepaper it says the sovrin token is instrinsic. Does that mean any usage of the E-ID have intrinsic costs associated(like a public Blockchain)? If yes, what about possile use cases like E-Government which should be free? For example E-Voting based on a Sovrin E-ID needs to be free because otherwise there is an incentive for not participating (which is unacceptable for a democracy).